AUTHOR! AUTHOR!

I've learned that I get a lot of attention from everyone by riding in the poussette, but today when Mom told my admirers that I was here collecting material for my book, I felt famous already!  We met Simone, who was celebrating her 10th birthday in Paris with her grandmother, Karrin, in front of Hotel de Ville.  She LOVED me and my poussette and asked if she could take a picture.  While Mom chatted with her grandmother, she photographed me from every angle.  Mom told her we were writing a blog, that I had already written one book and was working on another, and they wanted to know how to find it.  The grandmother said she would look on Amazon and we had to admit that we weren't quite that famous yet, but we did tell her where she could find it online, and that the second one hadn't come out yet - still working on that - but she could read the blog.  I felt like I was the highlight of the granddaughter's trip and I wasn't even Parisian!

 We walked farther to the Place de Vosges in the Marais.  Marais means "swamp" and this area used to be a swamp centuries ago until Henri IV had built a grand square of red brick residences with arcades lining the inner courtyard  around an open area used for promenades, jousts, and other entertainment.  At each end the buildings were the higher and  even more grand residences of the king and queen.  The square has housed many courtesans, nobility, and celebrities such as writers and philosophers over the centuries.  Victor Hugo lived at no. 6 where there is now a museum.

Mom didn't know if I would be allowed to go in if I was in the poussette, but thought she'd give it a try.  She rolled me up to the welcome counter and asked if she could take in the poussette.  There were about four people behind the counter and one responded, "No, but you can leave the poussette here and carry the bebe in your arms.  Would that be all right?"  Mom said,"It's not a bebe, it's a chien."  "Un chien?!!!" they all cried out at once, and proceeded to tell everyone around that I was a DOG in a POUSSETTE!  Well, even though they thought that was very special, I still didn't get to go in.  However, one of the guards was so taken with me that after a conversation about me, the poussette, her dog and a look at pictures of her dog, Jazz, she took me into an area with a bust of Paul Meurice who was a playwright, a contemporary and friend of Victor Hugo.  He so admired Hugo's work that he collected much of it and became the founder of the museum.  We were then led into a vestibule with a display case that held some of his original writings which you can see in the photo behind me.  The guard even gave me a book of my own - for Patch's library she said.